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Definition of recusant in English:

recusant

Pronunciation: /ˈrekyəz(ə)nt//rəˈkyo͞oz(ə)nt/

noun

1A person who refuses to submit to an authority or to comply with a regulation.

‘At the very least, then, Fowler and her family were actively involved in a Midlands network of recusants.’

‘The Lancashire desolation and remoteness was a refuge for recusants - awkward people who were stubborn and resilient, and whose best expression was not in word but in action and a capacity to come back for more persecution.’

‘No doubt some people did feel this way, especially astronomers, computists, and recusants.’

‘We cannot install any of our circle among the young lady's confidantes; Salisbury suspects them all as recusants, and advises Lord Harington whom to keep and whom to expel.’

‘From 307 he used the death penalty only rarely, but mutilated recusants and sent them to the mines; outside Egypt there were relatively few executions.’

adjective

‘The poetry of this Staffordshire circle embraces the non-court, recusant and social milieu of the first Lord Aston, his children, their spouses and friends.’

‘After the excommunication of Elizabeth I in 1570, the purpose of legislation changed from securing royal supremacy to defeating the new recusant missionary campaign.’

‘We still have no clear idea of the extent of underground compositions written for use in the recusant community, but Byrd's masses would have been part of this campaign.’

‘A group of recusant players under Cholmeley's patronage toured in Yorkshire from 1606 to at least 1616 using only printed play-texts for their repertory.’

‘His early acting career probably began with performances before a network of recusant gentry in the Warwickshire area where he served as a resident player under the pseudonym Shakeshaft.’

‘Indeed, the law has already been abused by some university administrators who now have the power to punish recusant colleagues.’

‘The hand of co-editor Richard Wilson is clearly felt in the speculation on Shakespeare's possible residency in the recusant Catholic communities of the province during his so-called ‘lost years’.’

‘His ravishing portrait of the young English recusant nun Elizabeth Throckmorton (c. 1729; Washington, NG) is a case in point.’

‘Monmouthshire was indeed the strongest recusant area in the kingdom, apart from Lancashire.’

‘Elizabeth Petre, nearly fifteen years of age, was engaged to marry twenty-two year-old William Sheldon, scion of the wealthy recusant family that introduced tapestry-making to England.’

‘He was a fixture in the liturgical life of the recusant safe-houses, the great country homes of Catholic aristocrats, which served as 16 th-century catacombs riddled with secret chambers to hide fugitive priests.’

‘Having had some narrow escapes the priest was eventually arrested as a recusant priest and was tried by revolutionary Court.’

‘A recusant Catholic would not be the possessor of that right.’

‘Later still, I learnt that it was quite likely he'd been born Catholic, from a recusant family.’